Jeopardy Champ Ken Jennings Thinks You Should Claim Bir Tawil

Jeopardy champ Ken Jennings discusses Bir Tawil, a piece of undeclared land between Egypt and Sudan.

Terra nullius is Latin for “no man’s land”—that is, land belonging to no one. As you might imagine, in an overcrowded world, there’s not a lot of terra nullius left. The ocean, the moon, most of Marie Byrd Land in West Antarctica… and Bir Tawil. Wait, Bir Tawil? Yes, this 800-square-mile trapezoid of rocky desert sits right between Egypt and the Sudan, but neither of them apparently wants it much.

The confusion over Bir Tawil is the result of Britain’s colonial rule over the region. The Egyptian-Sudanese border was drawn twice: once in 1899 and once in 1902. If the two borders had been identical, we’d have no problem, but they weren’t. The 1899 border is a straight line along the 22nd parallel, but the 1902 one takes a little zigzag at the Red Sea, in order to move an ethnically Sudanese area within Khartoum’s jurisdiction. Today, Egypt claims the 1899 border, while Sudan claims the 1902 border, leaving poor Bir Tawil orphaned.

Why doesn’t either nation claim Bir Tawil? Because they each want the version of their borders that includes the Hala’ib Triangle, another disputed border region, but one with more fertile soil, access to the Red Sea, and natural gas deposits. If either nation were to claim Bir Tawil, they’d lose Hala’ib.

Egypt unofficially administers the region today by default. Historically, it was the grazing land of the Ababda nomads of the Nile Valley, which is why the 1902 zigzag awarded it to Egypt in the first place. Bir Tawil means “deep well” in Arabic, and must refer to a water source of those early inhabitants.

Do you want Bir Tawil? It’s unclaimed land, so go ahead and set up shop. This can be the fabled homeland for your ethnic group, religious sect, or fringe political belief of choice. The area has no roads and no permanent settlements, though local tribes do pass through its wadis, or valleys, probably to use the wells that gave it its name. The only problem is that your promised land is bordered on all sides by vast tracts of barren Egyptian and Sudanese desert, so it might be hard to access.